Inception
by Griselda Banks
Summary: AU Oneshot. What if John and Sherlock met when they were children? No relation to the movie, in case you were wondering, and no pairings.


**Author's Note: The inspiration for this story came from an interesting little video I found on YouTube that used clips from another movie to make it seem like John and Sherlock met when they were children. The idea was so fascinating that I had to explore it a bit. I had to restrain myself from figuring what all the characters would be like at that age, and kept it focused on John and Sherlock instead.**

It wasn't exactly how John Watson had expected to spend his first day of school. No one spoke to him at lunch, though he sat at a table full of friendly-looking people, and when the teacher called on him to recite the multiplication table, he messed up eight-sixes-is-forty-eight and everyone laughed at him. Quite prepared to go home and sulk and work up a feeling of dread for the following day, John started across the playground.

Most of the other children were streaming out the big front doors on the other side of the school building, but John didn't really feel like being around anyone at the moment. Besides, his house was in the other direction. Maybe he would find a shortcut.

But as John made it halfway across the playground, he realized there were three other boys in the far corner. His steps faltered as he recognized from their postures what was going on. The tallest and broadest of the three shoved the small, skinny boy roughly against the chain-link fence while the third laughed sycophantically. As John approached, he could hear his reedy voice. "Can I hit him now, Carter? Can I?"

"Quiet, Anderson."

John didn't recognize the victim of these bullies, but he looked like he must be somewhere around John's age. Skinny as a broom, hawk-like nose, dark curly hair. Put some big nerdy glasses on him and bullies would probably flock to him like bees to honey. But despite the obvious disadvantage, the boy frowned back at Carter steadily – even haughtily. "Let me guess," he said calmly. "You want my pocket money."

"Nice to know we're thinking along the same lines," Carter sneered. "Now hand it over – and don't try to hold any back, you slimy weasel. I can tell from that fancy car of yours you've got plenty to spare."

"And I can see from your buttonholes that you're both delinquents, so I suppose that means I'm supposed to feel sorry for you."

Anderson looked down at his shirt in confusion. "Buttonholes...?"

"Shut it, you freak." Carter grabbed the boy by the collar and shoved him hard against the fence again, pressing his weight against him till the chain links bulged outward. "You're always trying to prove you're cleverer than everybody else, like you're some sort of genius. Just like that brother of yours. That fat kid – always strutting around like he was something special."

Though it had to hurt, being pressed against the fence like that, the boy didn't seem outwardly perturbed. "Mycroft? What did he do, steal your girlfriend? And now that he's off to Oxford he's out of your reach, so you decided the best way to get back at him was to beat up his little brother. Sorry, Carter, you'll have to try harder next time."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Carter growled, pressing him harder.

"First mistake – Mycroft wouldn't feel the slightest bit of grief if he heard I'd been bullied; he'd probably tell me I deserved it somehow. And second – the mind is always superior to the body, so resorting to physical intimidation proves that your mind must be abnormally small."

It took a moment for the words to sink in, but then Carter scowled. "Why you-" Letting go of the boy's shirt, he curled his hand into a fist and raised it to strike.

John, who had been hovering nearby and trying to decide whether he should avoid the situation altogether or get a teacher to put an end to it, found himself moving forward before he had time to think. He threw himself in front of the skinny boy clutching to the chain-link fence, yelling, "Don't hit him!"

The blow landed on his cheek instead of its intended target, and John fell to the ground. For a moment, everyone froze in shock – Carter with his fist still in the air, John clutching his smarting cheek and blinking dust out of his eyes. He looked up at the skinny boy, still braced against the fence in preparation for Carter's attack. The boy stared back at him in complete surprise, all trace of haughtiness gone. But as they met each other's gaze, a thread of understanding seemed to link them together. John nodded once, and they both leapt on their assailants with a yell.

The fight was one-sided, of course, since the bullies were two years ahead of them and much bigger. John and the skinny boy would have been hurt much worse than they were had a car not approached on the street just on the other side of the fence. Carter and Anderson scurried away across the vacant lot next to the school so they wouldn't be caught, leaving the younger boys to nurse their wounds in the dirt.

In the restroom, John washed a few cuts on his hands from scraping across the ground, while the other boy curiously examined his cut lip in the mirror. He seemed untroubled by his battle scars, but John looked ruefully at the lurid bruise that was beginning to form on his cheek. "How will I ever explain this to Mum?" he wondered aloud. He could only imagine the look on his mother's face if she found out he'd been bullied.

"Tell them you fell down the stairs," the other boy said, his words rather hard to understand since he was stretching his lower lip with his fingers, watching the blood trickle from the cut curiously as though it belonged to someone else. "Always works for me."

John grabbed a paper towel and pressed it to the boy's lip, unable to just watch as he did that to himself. "You mean this has happened before?"

"Every month or two," came the muffled reply. He took the paper towel and dabbed at his lip himself. "Though no one's ever..." He glanced at John in the mirror, then quickly looked away again. "I can tell you're new here. Why did you interfere?"

John shrugged. "It was the decent thing to do. You'd have done the same."

From the look the other boy gave him, he suddenly realized that maybe...he wouldn't. "Besides," John added quickly, "it wasn't fair – two against one."

"I could have taken them."

John let out a laugh of disbelief. "No you couldn't. If you were really that smart, you'd have found a way to make them leave, not just make them angrier than ever. That was sort of stupid, actually."

The boy looked dumbfounded, as though no one had ever called him stupid before. He looked around awkwardly, then said haltingly, "Oh. You...you think that, do you?"

"Definitely."

His face fell almost comically. "Right. Erm...the name's Sherlock Holmes, by the way."

Now there was a name you didn't come across every day. "John Watson."

Suddenly, Sherlock fished into his pocket and pulled out a mobile phone – one of the latest models, John noticed. Sherlock made a face as he read his latest text and said, "Sorry, got to dash – my car's just pulled up."

So Carter hadn't been exaggerating about the car. As Sherlock headed for the door, John called after him, "Sit with me at lunch tomorrow."

Sherlock turned and frowned in genuine confusion. "Why?"

John's heart sank to his shoes, but one corner of it still fluttered hopefully. "Because...that's what friends do."

"But we're not friends...are we?"

John beamed. "We are now."


End file.
